Guides

If you’re going to make up a story and possibly go to prison for it, it might as well be a grand one.

Enter Sylvia Mardini. The 24-year-old Los Angeles woman who pretended she had been kidnapped across state lines last summer, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Los Angeles to lying to the FBI. She faces up to five years in prison at sentencing on May 10.

Mardini vanished last August 21 and started sending text messages to her mother saying she had been kidnapped at gunpoint and she was in Utah, authorities said.

The hoax got the attention of the media. The FBI and Los Angeles Police coordinated a multi-state search.

Colorado State Patrol found her at a gas station alone in Routt County, Colo. After she returned to Los Angeles, she told FBI agents of the kidnapping story.